I have about a decade of experience in low- and no-budget filmmaking, including 9 feature films and too many shorts to count. Technology is a wonderful thing, as is the fact that people are willing to pitch in and led equipment, talent, and locations for nothing. But...<p>a) if you work this way (with actors doubling up as crew and so on), then you say goodbye to QA. Although there are clear improvements from project to project the quality is...not good. I don't want to go through a laundry list of critcisms. But I suggest ditching the DV camera, getting a DSLR, and learning to shoot at 24p with a 1/50 shutter speed. The cost and time savings of not using DV tapes <i>alone</i> will cover the food bill for your shoot.<p>b) "I raised $2,000 using Kickstarter." That's a very small budget, but it's a hell of a lot bigger than $0, no? This sort of bait-and-switch marketing technique only works if you have a commercial release. Your budget is part of your marketing plan, and you can only use this trick once. OK, so the point is that the filmmaker did it with $0 of his own cash. There's a thin line between creatively financing your project on a shoestring, and coming off as a freeloader.<p>c) "If this is what I did with $2,000 imagine what I could do with $2,000,000." Production companies in Hollywood hear this pitch approximately weekly. The response (among themselves, not to you) is 'I'm perfectly capable of wasting my own money.' What you need to focus on now is leveraging the achievements so far into a $20,000 budget (enough to pay a minimum wage to a small crew and cast), and having a plan to generate a similar amount of revenue. <i>That</i> will open doors to larger things.
Really refreshing to see how people use their resources in another industry. I'm glad to hear that he got inspiration from the hacker community at SXSW.I haven't watched the movie yet, but I have it bookmarked for this weekend.
Could somebody take this further and build up a studio that seeds those kind of movies?<p>I mean, look at Primer (posted here, thanks!): a budget of 7000$ and a 424000$ revenue. Even if they had a margin of 10% on that, 42000$ is still a great payback.<p>I was reading on HN of a guy proposing budgets of 25k per movie. That means 4 movies with 100 k. Is somebody doing this? Why nothing like this comes up or more mainstream?<p>Thoughts?
Action City Bathroom[1] is brilliantly funny (at least IMHO).<p>[1] - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fqC9iKpZns" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fqC9iKpZns</a>
Whenever I see people claiming they did something for 0$ I find it disingenuous. It reminds me of the old JWZ quote:<p>> Linux is only free if your time has no value
There's a great indie film making community in Fairfield, IA. Have you ever been there? <a href="http://theskyisfree.com" rel="nofollow">http://theskyisfree.com</a> is an example of something out of Fairfield - also made on basically 0 budget.
I have not seen this movie (yet) - But there is an other film that was made on a shoestring budget (ca$5000) called Donkey.<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1595388/" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1595388/</a><p>This film has the feeling and quality of early Quentin Tarantino films, and a plot that is much better than 90% of major US films.